A village in Japan, dwindled to eight residents, has voted to dissolve itself, sell the property to a developer and use the proceeds to move en masse elswhere: Village Writes Its Epitaph: Victim of a Graying Japan - New York Times: Ogama's decision, though extreme, points to a larger problem besetting Japan, which has one of the world's fastest-graying societies and whose population began declining last year for the first time in its history. As rural Japan becomes increasingly depopulated, many villages and hamlets like Ogama, along with their traditions and histories, risk vanishing.